Oculus Quest- Facebook’s latest VR headset

On Wednesday, at Facebook’s annual event Oculus Connect 5 (OC5), held in San Jose, California, Mark Zuckerberg presented the latest stand-alone VR headset that doesn’t need a smartphone nor a connection to a PC, from the Oculus division. Oculus Quest VR will be available on the market in the spring of 2019, for $400.

What does Oculus Quest have to offer?

Besides offering 6DOF (6 degrees of freedom = the ability of moving forward and back, side to side, and up and down in a virtual space), Oculus Quest also offers two touch motion controllers made out a mix of glossy and matte plastic that have analog sticks and physical buttons and triggers.

It also has the great selection of 50 games and some of them are very popular already: Robo Recall, Moss and Vader Immort, which is a “Star Wars” experience that will immerse players in the game’s theatrical story, “You’ll be able to step inside the world of Star Wars in the comfort of your living room and, for the first time, truly feel free.”, adds ILM(Industrial Light & Music) ‘s representatives.

Moreover, Oculus Quest‘s tracking system technology(named Oculus Insight by Facebook) is able to detect corners, edges and other things as walls, ceilings, furniture, windows and even curtains thank to its four ultra-wide-angle sensors. A member of the Oculus team said about this sensor system: “Oculus Insight uses four ultra-wide-angle sensors and advanced computer vision algorithms to track your position in real time.”.

For now, this is the only information related to Oculus Quest’s technic specifications, but we are waiting to receive even more exact details regarding its 3D-performance specs.

Wait a bit… is there a connetion between the Project Santa Cruz and Oculus Quest?

Not only that they are fully connected, but they are also the same. Yesss, you read correctly, Oculus Quest is actually the Project Santa Cruz whom the Facebook team presented it back in 2016 at Facebook’s Connect Developer Conference.

Despite not being given concrete details about Oculus Quest, there is someone to leave this news on a more positive note: “I have always considered Santa Cruz/Quest to be Facebook’s target device and form factor. It gives them the performance and control of the user experience that the Rift cannot because of Windows and PC makers. That’s why I think they are able to squeeze so much performance out of the 835, they have been optimizing for that chip for years. They want this to be what developers target first and foremost.”, said Anshel Sag, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.